ANCIENT ENGINEER GIVES FLOOD LESSON
Ancient Engineer Gives Flood Lesson Chinese Method of Deep Dredging Instead of Levee Building is Plan in Orient, a Principle Followed 2100 Years. By LINCOLN COLCORD (Reprinted from Minneapolis...
...THE FACT is that up to the present time we have followed the easiest way in the Mississippi valley, have failed to face the real problem, and have only added to the future task...
...And it appears that we have not as yet adopted, or even considered, the only correct engineering principle for controlling those...
...Dig the bed deep, keep the banks low...
...The levees should be abandoned wherever possible as the level is lowered...
...Ultimately, of course, the process has to stop...
...Floods Are Unknown AND throughout this time the engineering principle laid down by Li-ping, without which the whole remarkable irrigation system would have destroyed itself centuries ago, has been strictly and steadfastly followed...
...such sediment would have commercial value...
...Szeehuan is the size of Sweden or California...
...Turn Hack 2100 Years FOR THAT principle we have to turn back 2,100 years and listen to the words of a Chinese engineer, the concrete application of whose ideas has furnished the bread of life to millions of human beings for over 20 centuries...
...The improvement in navigating conditions along the Mississippi river would return the cost of the enterprise to the wealth of the nation...
...The Cheng-tu plain in the center of the province is an area 100 miles long and 60 miles wide...
...The river should be brought back if possible to the level of its old natural bed...
...We congratulate ourselves that in respect of scientific, mechanical and engineering attainments we in America stand in the vanguard of modern progress...
...The question is not whether we can do it...
...The average level of the river will rise between the levees, and the bottom will rise in equal proportion as further sediment is deposited...
...The works which he and his sons established at that remote time, 175 years before the opening of the Christian era, for controlling the waters of the Min river in Szechuan province and distributing them across the great Cheng-tu plain, are still in perfect operation at the present day...
...conditions...
...This would help to pay the cost of the enterprise...
...Dig the bed deep, keep the banks, low...
...In actual dollars and cents we have probably expended many times more wealth in vain attempts at temporary control than a permanent engineering plan established from the beginning would have entailed...
...We have been utterly unscientific in the larger sense...
...But the main item of this centralized plan must be the constant dredging of the river...
...In connection with this, there should be a system of dams and reservoirs on the tributary streams for impounding the flood waters...
...This is shown clearly by the Yellow river in China, a river which the Chinese have been unable to control because they were not equal to the mechanical application of the correct principle which they already knew...
...Across this plain the Min river is distributed in eight main branches, converging at the lower end of the plain to form a single river again, which empties into the Yang-tze above the Gorges...
...But the correct principles must never be departed from...
...there is nothing else to do...
...Throughout that long period of time they have been the foundation of the prosperity of China's richest agricultural province...
...It should be obvious to any layman's mind that the thing to do with the Mississippi river is to dredge the bottom and deposit the annual sediment on the surrounding country as fertilizing material...
...Already it has been lifted 15 or 20 feet above the city of New Orleans...
...Shen tao t'an, ti tso yen," which, translated into English, means: "Dig the bed deep, keep the banks low...
...The net result of the process is only to lift the whole river bodily above the plain...
...Flood conditions are unknown...
...The question is not whether it would cost too much...
...The gift of science to us is the ability to do what China has been unable to do with the Yellow river...
...there is no other alternative...
...Very soon the levees will have to be built higher...
...Keep Banks Low IN" THIS PROCESS, the danger grows by arithmetical progression...
...Given a river flowing through a flat alluvial plain, depositing sediment in its own bottom as it goes and constantly filling up its bed, the building of levees along its banks is courting disaster...
...It is easy to foresee a time when it will become an aerial waterway,' the levees built up like dams on either bank, and nothing ahead but -to build them still higher, la the meanwhile the rate of flow will become constantly lessened, adding still another danger in the backing up of the current itself and the increasing deposit of sediment in the bottom...
...On the walls of the temple built to the memory of Li-ping and his sons at Kuan Hsien, where the Min river debouches from the mountains and the ancient engineering works are established, is written this saying, familiar to every Chinese student...
...There are points where "China's Sorrow" has~now been lifted CO feet above the plain...
...By LINCOLN COLCORD (Reprinted from Minneapolis Tribune) TWO THOUSAND one hundred years ago a Chinese engineer, Li-ping, laid down the correct engineering principle for controlling the flood conditions . of a river flowing through a flat alluvial plain...
...Tt is not necessary for a man to have engineering training to see the force of this argument...
...The higher the river is lifted, the greater the head of water with respect to the surrounding region, and the greater the area of flowage when the river breaks through...
...We are familiar with the fact that the Chinese are not a scientific people...
...its population has been roughly estimated at 40 or' 50 millions...
...Dig the bed deep, keep the banks low...
...Yet today we are facing the worst flood conditions ever known in the heart of our nation...
...Mud-sucking dredgers should be put to work up and down the Mississippi river...
...In terms of 2,000 years what we are doing with the Mississippi is fantastic...
...Mechanical progress has given us all sorts of efficient mud-sucking dredging machinery...
...All other plans lead to ultimate disaster...
Vol. 19 • July 1927 • No. 7
